MEET JUDE ALSALIM
Jude AlSalim is a young artist who continues to astonish us with the different ways of experimenting with art. Her creative journey began simply through experimenting with fiction, then photography, then graphic design, and soon after, the three all together. The true meaning of an artist to Jude AlSalim, is anyone willing to surprise themselves, which is why as an artist she mentioned to always strive for that.
Jude expressed that she didn’t expect anything to come out of her experiments, but always hoped to surprise herself, because of her willingness to surprise herself through art, Jude doesn’t believe that there is a specific field of art that she belongs in, in her own words, “I experiment in art, and that’s my title.” Jude’s interest in the creative world began through abstract art, she mentions that she’s always been more drawn to the abstract rather than the real and tangible. To her, “Art is creation, it’s a place where right and wrong don’t exist, and absolutely anything is possible.”
The artist established her first project in 2018, Beyond Magazine, as her senior project in high school. Her favorite project is the first post she designed for the magazine’s Instagram page. She appreciates that post the most because of how personal it is to her, it was the beginning of something she had never imagined to be as large.
She discusses the inspiration behind her favorite piece as being the struggle to compromise parts of yourself for another. She told Fekr “It’s what it means for two separate selves to merge, if it is even possible or healthy for two people to become one, and if the opposite extreme—never compromising—was a possible scenario. The artwork expresses a struggle to find oneself in one of these options.” Jude explains, “Red and yellow are clashing, symbolizes neither one compromising its place for the other, and neither agreeing to merge and simply become orange. The Winged Victory of Samothrace marble sculpture is centered in the piece without her main attraction—the wings.”
Jude mentions some important issues in the creative world such as the fact that many artists, including herself, have to also market, advertise, and manage their work all on their own, which can be very difficult to do all together. One of the other issues she found in the creative world, is the fewer opportunities for the artists and creatives in the MENA region. A change that she would like to see is more encouragement for the upcoming generation to consider art as a career. “We often hear parents telling their children to make them proud by becoming a doctor, a pilot, or perhaps an engineer, but we rarely hear them encouraging art as a career, What should be expressed is that both sides have tremendous value in creating progress.”
With the issue of the current pandemic, Jude tells us that she normally found inspiration by going out and discovering new things, which is why she found struggle in being creative during quarantine, however, her solution to the struggle was finding inspiration within conversations, music, and art, which is something we can all learn from.
